Too Many Murders

by Colleen McCullough

  Abe was glowing when Carmine walked into the autopsy suite, despite the grisly nature of the crime; it was his talent for finding concealed compartments that had broken the case open, and he felt all the thrill of a job done better than others could have. He was not by nature overambitious, nor was he a selfish man, but he had his share of pride, both in his work and in himself.

  “There was a wallet in the storage bin,” Abe said to Carmine. “The victim’s name is Mark Schmidt, according to his driver’s license, issued in Wisconsin two years ago on his eighteenth birthday. Whatever money he had is gone, but his MasterCard is there. The last receipt is dated October of 1966—seven months ago. No photos or letters.”

  “The thoracic and abdominal cavities have been stuffed with a plastic mattress foam,” Patrick said, “as well as sticks of incense and spices. This is a serious attempt at mummification without the natron Herodotus describes. Sterling’s brought the Egyptians up to date—better tools, better techniques. As you can see, Mark is very good-looking, with a head of hair like M.M.’s, kind of apricotbcolored. That may be why Sterling made no attempt to remove the brain—didn’t want to risk ruining it. The kid was in the pink of health when he was asphyxiated, probably with a plastic bag during a drug-induced sleep. Strangulation would have marred him. I can’t establish a time frame for the anal sex, so I can’t tell you whether he was by inclination homosexual. There’s been a lot of anal insult over the past year, certainly. The ligature tying off the rectum—the one that severed the colon—is a good ten inches in from the anus, which suggests that Sterling has been engaging in necrophilia.”

  All Abe’s pleasure fled in an instant; he stared at Patsy in horror. “No!” he whispered.

  “Definitely yes, Abe,” Patsy said gently.

  “Any idea when he died?” Abe asked, valiantly recovering.

  “I think that receipt tells you more than autopsy can. Put down seven months ago, Abe.” Patrick looked at Carmine. “Where is Mr. Lancelot Sterling?”

  “Downstairs in a holding cell.”

  From which he was brought to an interrogation room. Abe did the questioning, while Carmine watched on the far side of the one-way window.

  He appears so inoffensive, Carmine thought. Just one of literally millions of men who spend their working hours pushing paper in offices, have never done any other kind of job, and never will. Living unexciting lives, looking forward to putting their feet up with a few cans of beer to watch football.

  Sterling was on the tall side of average, had a good head of nut-brown hair, and regular features that should have made him handsome, yet didn’t. A part of that was his expression—haughty, conceited, humorless. The other contributing factor was his eyes, which lacked all animation. He would never pull the wings off butterflies, Carmine thought, because he wouldn’t even notice their existence. Whatever world he lives in has no color, no vitality, no joy, no sorrow. All it consists of is a single appalling drive. In all truth he is a monster. Being caught hardly impinges on him; all that matters is that he’s lost Mark Schmidt and his little change purse.

  “Do you think he’s killed others?” Abe asked later, seeking the respected opinion he’d leaned on for years.

  “You know more about this case than I do, Abe. What do you think?” Carmine countered.

  “Then, no,” Abe said. “He’s paid to flog youths, but Mark Schmidt is his first murder. It’s taken him years to assemble his tools and things like seventy pounds of hygroscopic crystals.”

  “Do you think he’d kill again?”

  Abe thought for a while, then shook his head. “Probably not, at least while Mark Schmidt fascinated him. If the attraction faded or the body decomposed too much, he’d wait until he found the right person, even if it took a long time. He made no secret of the fact that they lived together for six months. Well, he made no secret of any of it. He maintains that Mark died from natural causes and he couldn’t bear to part with him.” Abe flailed his hands around, frustrated. “It’s a good thing he’s mad—really, really mad. No one will want to try him, too much publicity.”

  “And there you have it, Abe. If it’s any consolation, you worked the case exactly as it needed to be worked.” Carmine looked into his eyes. “Will you sleep tonight?”

  “Most likely not, but all things fade. I’d rather lose my sleep than my humanity.”

  And home to an empty house. Carmine went up to his bedroom and stood staring at the big bed, properly made because he was a tidy man who disliked all kinds of disorder. Born and raised a Catholic, he had long left organized religion in the past; his job and his intellect rebelled against the astronomical conundrums lumped together under the single word “faith,” something he couldn’t see or feel. Of course Julian would go to St. Bernard’s Boys together with however many male siblings he might end up owning, but that had a certain logic. Kids needed ethics, principles and morals instilled in them at school as well as at home. As to what Julian and his potential brothers made of “faith” once they were grown, that was their business.

  Even so, gazing at the bed, Carmine was conscious that his house was filled with presences, the intangible spiritual relics of his wife, his son, all the others who had lived here. It made his loneliness worse, not better. Oh, the time and thought he’d put into this room, once he was entrusted with the decorating! A very plain room, Desdemona had said, but sumptuous in color; she had been awestruck at his instinct for color. He’d had an antique Chinese three-leafed screen in storage, trimmed in black and silver brocade, painted in black upon a white background, of rounded mountains poking their heads through mist, wind-warped conifers, a small pagoda up a tortuous flight of a thousand steps. He’d hung it above the bed, and done the room in lavender blue and peach so that neither sex triumphed. Desdemona loved the room and when heavy with Julian had embarked upon embroidering a bedspread in black and white, an echo of the screen. His birth had interrupted it, and it lay inside a cedar chest awaiting, she joked, her next pregnancy. If they had enough children, one day it would be finished. In the meantime, the spread was lavender blue with a little peach detail.

  Missing her unbearably, he turned away and went down to the kitchen, where his aunt had left a clam sauce for pasta. His mother was still too busy blaming herself for Desdemona’s peril to bother about cooking, but his sisters, aunts and cousins were making sure he didn’t starve. The door to Sophia’s tower led off the family sitting room, and was firmly shut; the owner of the eyrie was having a hard time of it in L.A., she informed her true father over the phone, as Myron was hovering on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Justifiably annoyed, Carmine had called him, abused him roundly for worrying a teenaged girl, and told him to snap out of it. Damn Erica Davenport! he thought for the hundredth time as he tipped fine fettuccine into a pan of boiling, salted water. She had cut a swath through the people he loved.

  Voices sounded at the front door; a key turned in the lock. Carmine stood stock-still by the stove, the last of the fettuccine falling into the water of its own accord. Desdemona! That was Desdemona’s voice! But he couldn’t move to go to her, shock had nailed his feet to the floor.

  “I might have known he’d still be at Cedar Street,” she was saying to someone, “and I’ll bet he forgot to shop.” Then, in a loud call, “Thank you, sir! I’ll be fine.” The taxi driver.

  She forged into the kitchen like a battleship in full sail, Julian on her left arm, wearing slacks and a blouse creased from her journey, her face flushed, her eyes sparkling.

  “Carmine!” she said, stopping in her own wake as she saw him. The wonderful smile transformed her plain face. “Dearest heart, you look like a fish in the bottom of a boat.”

  He closed his mouth and enveloped her and the baby in his arms, his lashes wet as he searched for her lips and found them. Only Julian, squawking at being squashed, recalled them to the time and place. Carmine took his son and kissed him all over his face, something Julian loved; Desdemona moved to the stove.

  “Pas
ta and clam sauce,” she said, peering into the bowl and the pan. “Aunt Maria, I’ll bet. There’s tons for two of us.” Then she took Julian from his father. “If you’ll excuse me, I intend to give him his dinner, then a bath, after which he goes sleepy-byes.”

  “What about jet lag, kid?” Carmine asked the baby.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Desdemona said. “I’ve deliberately kept him awake for hours and hours. The rest of first class was not amused.”

  “How did you get from JFK?”

  “Caught the Connecticut limousine. I wasn’t game to tell Myron that I was coming home. He wouldn’t understand.”

  And off she went with Julian, talking some nonsense in his ear. All the ghosts had vanished.

  “We didn’t find a thing in all that darkroom and radio gear,” Ted Kelly said gloomily. “Not a goddamn thing!”

  “Did you really think you would?” Carmine asked, still wrapped in the bliss of having Desdemona and Julian home.

  “I guess not, but it’s a disappointment all the same. I will admit, Carmine, that you and/or the Commissioner were pretty clever over the sniper on the Green,” Kelly said, a trifle grudgingly. “We could never find an excuse to search the Cornucopia Board’s homes. Though you’re skating on thin ice. Those guys have the money to take the County of Holloman all the way to the Supreme Court.”

  “We’ve apologized for acting overhastily in the stress of the moment. Do you honestly think they will sue us, Ted?” Carmine asked, smiling.

  “No. Too much public fuss. They’re petrified that someone will tell Ed Murrow about Ulysses.”

  “So thought the Commissioner and/or I.”

  “You’re a cunt, Delmonico.”

  “Step outside.”

  “I take it back. How come everybody knows about Ulysses?”

  “Blame yourself. With your voice, you don’t need a megaphone, yet you will persist in having your meetings right here in a cop diner. The ears flap like Dumbo.”

  “I hate small towns!”

  “This is a small city, not a town.”

  “Same difference. You all know too much about each other.”

  “Switch from your turkey to your eagle hat for a moment. Is it true that the entire Cornucopia Board is flying to Zurich in an attempt to acquire some Swiss company that makes transistors?”

  “Who’s your source?” Kelly demanded suspiciously.

  “Erica Davenport’s ex-secretary, Richard Oakes, who is now demoted to working for Michael Donald Sykes, yet another unhappy victim of top management,” Carmine said, toying with a plain salad. “Oakes and I went for a stroll this morning along the banks of the Pequot, where our words floated away on the breeze and our only witnesses were a flock of gulls. We must be in for a storm.”

  “Why are we in for a storm?” Kelly asked, sidetracked.

  “The gulls, Ted! Inland a bit?”

  “Oh! What exactly did Oakes tell you?”

  “That it’s more profitable these days to make transistors than cuckoo clocks, and that this Swiss company is onto something big. The word’s out, so everyone’s after the firm. Oakes said Cornucopia’s howling for the moon. Neither he nor Sykes can understand why the Board is going to Zurich.”

  “But we know why,” Kelly said grimly.

  “That we do. The trip enables Ulysses to take his purloined secrets with him. Which tells me, Mr. Kelly, that Ulysses hasn’t passed any to Moscow since sometime before April third. His briefcase must be full.”

  “Tell me about it! There’s nothing we can do, Carmine! The bastard will depart the country smelling like a rose, safely hemmed in by his fellow Board members.”

  Carmine felt like pacing, but that would rivet all eyes on them as well as all ears. Instead, he threw his hands into the air wildly. “But how did he talk the others into making the trip? They’re businessmen! If Sykes and Oakes know they’re howling at the moon, so must they! How did he bring them around?”

  “That’s the easy part,” Kelly said ruefully. “The Board’s just taken delivery of a brand-new Lear jet—long-range fuel tanks, reclining seats, spare pilot—the works. I bet all of them are eager to see what color the sky is over Zurich. Even better, the wives will have to stay home. Not enough room with a three-man flight crew and a couple of hostesses.”

  “When is this jaunt happening?” Carmine asked.

  “Tomorrow afternoon. The jet’s on the tarmac here. Then they’ll fly down to JFK to get international clearance,” Kelly said, and sighed. “Yep, tomorrow afternoon all Cornucopia’s secrets fly away, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  Ulysses is going to get away with it, Carmine thought as he walked back up Cedar Street to County Services. The fact that I know who he is beyond a shadow of a doubt is irrelevant; I have absolutely no proof. Just a cop’s instinct and the end result of myriad little facts and details coming together in my mind, some of those facts and details gotten with great pain and the calling in of favors.

  Kelly doesn’t know, and I’m not inclined to tell him. Fate pushed him into being here, a behemoth, and there’s a message in that: he belongs to a behemoth. He’s not the problem, it’s his faceless bosses, the ones who’ll push the buttons, the papers and the people in that ponderous sequence of steps protocol dictates before the big guns are ready for firing. By the time the sixteen-inchers roar, Ulysses will have performed his conjuring trick and look squeaky-clean. Ulysses is one guy; it doesn’t take an army to catch him. In fact, an army can’t. No one would notice him slink off in the clouds of dust. Let Ted Kelly go his way; I’ll go mine because I know who and what I have to contend with, have known since the significance of Bart Bartolomeo’s words sank into my mind and the lightbulb lit up.

  What I have to do is get Ulysses for murder. It’s neater and more final, if final can have a degree. My espionage facts and details paint a picture, but I don’t have an atom of proof; when Ulysses paints the same picture it will be more convincing. Whereas the murders he’s committed must leave a trail of hard evidence that I can find if I look in the right places.

  He had long passed County Services and decided now to keep going for a while. The wind was whipping up a little, but it felt good snatching at his face. He glanced up at the sky to see mackerel cloud up there and found the time to file a resolution to make sure the shutters on his house were closed before he went to bed. Then it was back to Ulysses.

  Think, Carmine, think! Who did Ulysses kill with his own hands? Desmond Skeps. Dee-Dee Hall, which flummoxes me. Why a whore who gives great blow jobs? No one else. His assistant killed Evan Pugh, Cathy Cartwright and Beatrice Egmont. Hired guns shot the three blacks—black hired guns, to blend into the neighborhood. The assistant impersonated a peddler of potions named Reuben to trick Peter Norton’s wife, and probably egged on Joshua Butler. It may have taken Ulysses himself to pierce Pauline Denbigh’s armor, but he didn’t kill the Dean. I don’t have the chance of a snowflake in hell to prove any of them. It has to be Skeps or Dee-Dee, or both.

  What were his weapons?

  Desmond Skeps … A hypodermic needle and several syringes, inexpertly wielded. Once upon a time he was shown how to use them, but the years have gone by since, and Skeps must have had tricky veins. Curare. An ammoniac household liquid. Drano. A tourniquet. Chloral hydrate in a glass of single malt Scotch. A safety razor. A midget soldering iron. Steel wire.

  Dee-Dee … A cutthroat razor. Only a scalpel has that kind of edge apart from a razor, and even Patsy’s autopsy blades couldn’t inflict a wound like that on a standing woman by an assailant looking her in the face. It’s the way forefinger and thumb hold the junction of the razor’s shell and its—tang? Very close up, and very personal. Ulysses must have been drenched in Dee-Dee’s blood like a man under a running tap. He didn’t cut the carotid arteries until the jugular veins slowed to a trickle, then he got a second bath. Hate! This was done in absolute hatred fiercer by far than Desmond Skeps. Who escorted Dee-Dee to the banquet. That says Skeps knew why
Ulysses hated Dee-Dee, even if Skeps didn’t know Ulysses was Ulysses. And what was it with Dee-Dee? She stood and took her death without a protest, according to Patsy. So she knew why Ulysses hated her, and admitted her guilt.

  I wonder if he kept those blood-saturated clothes? If his hatred burned that hot, maybe he needed a souvenir. The razor? That, he will definitely have. Enshrined somewhere. Not as a remembrance. As an instrument of execution.

  An image rose behind Carmine’s eyes so vividly that the hairs on his neck stood up. Jesus! I know where! I know where!

  His steps slowed; he stopped, turned around and walked back to County Services at a steady pace, jubilation dying. Knowing was one thing; marshaling his forces to prove it was another. Doubting Doug would have reverted to normal; easier to get blood out of a stone than a warrant to search premises. Not that Ulysses would part with his mementos. In that respect there was no hurry. Strictly speaking, the urgency was not his affair, as it concerned the spy rather than the killer. Except that Carmine was an American patriot. It was his duty to foil the spy too.

  By the time he gained his office his demeanor was as always. Delia, bursting on his gaze in green and orange paisley, gave him the kind of fright that only days ago would have provoked a smile. Today it was merely jarring.

  “Abe’s down with Lancelot Sterling,” she said, “and Corey is skulking around the aerodrome. He said something about a new Lear jet, but I confess I was only half listening. I was on the phone to Desdemona.”

  “I might have known,” he said, torn between an urge to tell Delia what was filling his mind and reluctance to burden her with his own frustrations.

  “They’re safe here,” she said, smiling.

  That decided him. “Sit down, Delia. I need to talk.”

  By the end of it she looked horrified. Then she did a very un-Delia thing: she stroked his arm. “My dear Carmine, I fully comprehend your dilemma. But if Ulysses hated Dee-Dee with such passion, it must relate to some sort of ruination, and she must have been the instrument of it. I think it might pay me to make exhaustive enquiries into Dee-Dee’s background. That’s the trouble with prostitutes. No one bothers to look at them with a magnifying glass. Am I still empowered to act as a detective?”